Need a high voltage power supply for your projects ? Then you came to right place. I will show you how to build a simple and powerful high voltage power supply using a flyback transformer.

#DANGER#

That output voltage I think is around 50,000 volts, though the current will be very low. It won't kill you as its very high frequency DC but it will still burn you as the arcs produced are very very hot.

Step 1: Materials Required

1. Flyback Transformer - Any would work but newer one are more robust and can output a higher voltage. They can be taken out of a CRT TV or you can buy a new one

2. MOSFET - Any mosfet will work but the drain to source voltage should be at least be 200v and it should have Rds(on) lesser than 200mΩ. I used the IRFP460 but I dont recommend you to use it since it has a Rds(on) of 270mΩ. I recommend to use IRFP250.

3. Heatsink - You will need a heatsink the mosfet since it will get hot. I used an intel cpu heatsink through which I drilled a hole. The heatsink you are using must be big.

4. Fan - You will need a fan for the heatsink since it does get very hot.

5. 555 Timer

6. Resistors - 2x 10k resistors

7. Capacitor - 1nf ceramic capacitor, A large electrolytic capacitor for smoothing the positive rail, A polyester capacitor of capacitance 0.68uF or higher with a voltage rating of 200v or higher

8. Breadboard or pcb - To build the circuit on

9. Power Supply - I used a 12v 10 amp power supply

10. Wires - Thicker wires will be needed for the primary coil and mosfet connections

Step 2: Schematic

In this circuit you can even make the arcs musical. You have to supply audio at the point marked on the schematic. If you don't want to then you can just leave the pin 5 unconnected to anything.

Step 3: Primary Coil

I have wound 6 turns of 20 awg wire around the ferrite core and then used some glue so they don't unwind. You can try different amount of turns as the sweet spot will be different for every flyback transformer.

A capacitor is connected in parallel with the primary coil to operate the flyback in resonance mode. You can try different values to see which one works the best. I used a 1uF 250v capacitor, and remember that only a polyester or MKP capacitor can be used.

Step 4: Power It Up

This circuit can be power with voltages higher than 12v, but when you first power it up power it with 12v or lower to find if it works or not, if it doesn't work then switch it off as fast as possible. If it doesn't work try reversing the connections of the primary.

If can be powered with up to 16v, if you want to power it with 16+ volts then you will have to power the 555 timer and the primary coil with different power supplies as the max input voltage of 555 timer is 16v. A 9v battery can be used to power the 555.

Step 5: Update

I used an arduino with a sd card module to play music on the flyback with music on a sd card, so this is the new schematic. For this code to work you have to download the TMRpcm library from this link https://github.com/TMRh20/TMRpcm

To make it work :

1. Format the SD card

2. Take your music file and convert to a WAV file with these dimensions -

Sampling rate - 16000 Hz

Channel - Mono

Bit resolution - 8 bit

3. Rename your WAV file to 'music'

4. Put it in your SD card

Use this website to convert to WAV files - https://audio.online-convert.com/convert-to-wav